1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to the field of telephone line circuits and related communication circuitry forming the interface between analog and digital telephone subscriber lines and trunks and a digital switching network. Specifically, the present invention relates to a digital line circuit providing automatic matching of the impedance of lines/trunks terminated by an electronic hybrid and to the automatic synthesis within the hybrid of the line matching impedance without the use of discrete components and with minimized power dissipation.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In the prior art relating to two-to-four wire conversion, the problem caused by the impedance mismatch at the telephone central office between the subscriber lines/trunks line and the terminating impedance is well known. Such mismatch causes poor return loss characteristics and reflections or echoes due to poor operation of the two-to-four wire hybrid, which for proper operation, requires the line impedance and terminating impedance to be equal in both phase and magnitude over the bandwidth of the telephone channel. Passive fixed terminating impedances to date represent a compromise, except at a specific frequency, due to the fact that such compromise impedance is either a series or parallel combination of a resistor and capacitor. Such a simple impedance results in a poor match for the line impedance. Typically, the hybrid which performs two-to-four wire conversion depends upon a relatively close match between the line and the terminating impedances and for optimum performance, a good match over the range of frequencies of interest is required. Compensating for this mismatch has been attempted in the prior art with balance or "building-out" networks which are a part of the hybrid, and which, for a given line, represents a custom tailoring of the circuit.
A further problem due to impedance mismatch at the far end of the line occurs if that end is improperly terminated. An unwanted reflection or echo is returned to the near end. If the near-end terminating impedance equals the line impedance and if the transhybrid loss is zero, then optimum performance is obtained from the near end equipment. The far end echo can also be minimized by the use of known echo cancellation techniques.
Such prior art echo cancellation techniques depend upon a priori knowledge of the locally transmitted signal, and an assumed non-correlative relationship between the near end transmitted signal and the far-end received signal.
Using adaptive equalization techniques, with or without training signals, the correlative portion of the far-end reflection present in the near-end receive signal can be regenerated, using an adaptive equalizer, and subtracted from this locally received signal.
Conditions for proper operation of the adaptive equalizer must be met. The equalizer must have an adequate S/N ratio to allow for equalizer convergence, and a linear network characteristic. Sufficient energy must be present across the band to allow for correct feedback control signals for digital filter tap adjustments. There must be an absence of "double-talk" during the equalization process. Next, and most significantly, the digital local office which must interface to analog subscriber loops must now add two two-to-four wire converters in order to interface these loops. Previously, with analog central offices, no hybrids were required.
These newly introduced hybrid interfaces can introduce reflections or unwanted return signals. Previously, for analog switches these additional hybrids were not present. Thus, without improved performance in the hybrid, the digital office is potentially poorer in performance than its analog predecessor.
The problem of "singing", or more explicitly, potential instability of the network in an Nyquist sense results from the unwanted feedback arising from the two-to-four wire conversions; and the system can conceivably oscillate if proper precautions are not taken. Classically, the VNL (Via Net Loss) Plan takes this condition into account by appropriately inserting attenuations throughout the network in a regulated manner, and specifying the transhybrid loss to meet some minimum criteria at those points in the network where two-to-four wire conversions take place.
Previously, in arriving at the attenuation which could be inserted in the existing networks, consideration was given to those offices (or circuits) which utilized two-to-four wire converters; namely, trunks. For analog local offices not requiring two-to-four wire converters, zero attenuation was allowed, and the insertion loss allowable was and is only a few tenths of a decibel. Thus, the problem of designing a digital local office to provide equivalent analog performance in an analog environment is aggravated by the existing VNL Plan. Experimental results show that the addition of attenuation (4-db) in the local office to overcome this problem served only to reduce the "Grade of Service", i.e. in comparison, telephone users can detect the poorer performance due to the added attenuation.
Automatic equalizers per se are well known in the field of digital data transmission, with U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,579,109 and 3,984,789 being illustrative. A digital adaptive equalizer is described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,633,105. U.S. Pat. No. 3,798,560 describes an adaptive transversal equalizer using a time-multiplexed second-order digital filter.